


I Found Myself an Old Solution

by aghamora



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, Body Image, Doggy Style, Dubious Morality, F/M, Internal Conflict, Pregnant Sex, Sexual Frustration, Stress Relief, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 16:42:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12324885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: “I need you to fuck me. Because if I don’t fuck someone soon I’m probably gonna kill someone, and I’m reallyreallytrying to minimize my body count. And I just… I need you to not ask any questions, okay?”“Uh… what?”“What part of not asking questions was unclear to you?”In which Laurel is pregnant. And stressed. And very horny. And Frank is in the wrong – orright– place at the wrong time.





	I Found Myself an Old Solution

**Author's Note:**

> So, lemme just note that this is not at all something that’s healthy nor is it something I 100% condone happening on the show, but after a bit in an upcoming episode summary about Laurel turning to an ‘old friend’ to ‘relieve some stress,’ this popped into my brain and wouldn’t vacate the premises. 
> 
> It’s most definitely not good for Frank and Laurel to be having sex with each other at this point in their lives, and I definitely don’t think they should be. But there are like 4000 layers to that kind of interaction to be explored if it DID happen, and it’s all sexy and terrible and manipulative and twisted, so. I just had to run with it.
> 
> If you’re looking for cute fluffy shippy smut, you should probably turn back now. Title from the song Bedroom Hymns by Florence and the Machine.

This is a bad idea, she thinks as she waits on the end of the bed, watching the time on her phone. A monumentally, astronomically, every single synonym-in-the-dictionary-ly bad idea.

But her life is a series of bad ideas these days, so. Really, what’s one more.

She hadn’t foreseen this being a side effect of pregnancy, for some reason, although she’s always had a higher-than-normal, borderline off the charts libido. She’d figured she’d have all the usual symptoms: swollen ankles and cravings and haywire hormones and a roulette wheel of volatile emotions – but this.

 _This_. She really hadn’t seen this coming. She hadn’t expected to be so ridiculously fucking _horny_ all the time.

She’s going to crawl out of her skin, she’s convinced – and the kicker is, it’s only seemed to get worse as the weeks go by, not easing up, that persistent, hungry throb between her legs pounding away like her heart has migrated down to her cunt with the express purpose of driving her to insanity. Her new hobby of playing Nancy Drew to take down her father and the added stress of school and the stress of everything has only exacerbated the problem, because she’s always been prone to fuck away her stress, but, well, that coping mechanism doesn’t exactly work when you don’t have anyone _to_ fuck.

Her nerves are frayed. She’s coming apart at the seams. And _coming_ , ironically enough, isn’t something she’s doing, either – at least not to a satisfactory degree. She can paw at her clit and fuck herself with her fingers all she wants every night, with the ghost in her bed next to her, and it never seems to help; it only ever makes her feel guilty, awful, for _wanting_ it when she’s like this, when she should still be grieving Wes, playing the role of the chaste, still-faithful expectant widow. Like the goddamn Virgin Mary.

It makes her want to rip her hair out by the roots. Makes her want to _scream_. She isn’t designed for abstinence. She can’t stand the idea of sitting around all picture-perfect and domestic and cliché, the perpetual mourner, keeping a candle lit through the night in his memory. She didn’t immediately become some non-sexual being the instant she got knocked up.

She’s _not_ a fucking widow. The idea makes her chafe. She feels like a black hole of a woman, sucking, destroying, consuming all matter in her path, longing to be filled. She wants to be fucked, well and truly _fucked_ , six ways to Sunday and back. She wants it hard and rough and downright filthy, wants to be held down, wants to come until she can’t remember her own last name.

She just _wants_. She wants it all.

This is a bad idea, in every conceivable way, and she’s fully aware of that. Laurel knew it was the instant she checked into a room at a Motel 6 on the outskirts of the city and pulled out her phone to text Frank the address with a terse, vague _Room 104. Come ASAP_ after it – because if she’s going to do this, if _they’re_ going to do this, she can’t do it in Wes’s bed, in Wes’s old apartment.

The worst part? She barely even feels bad. She should. She knows full well Frank will drop everything and come to her at once, knows he’ll give her anything, everything she wants. She’s manipulative. She’s selfish.

She’s genuinely too turned on to care. And hardly a minute later, her phone buzzes with his reply.

_Be right there._

~

 

“Everything okay?”

It’s a question she knew was coming, and Frank fires it off as soon as she steps aside, letting him into the room and closing the door. He’s an odd, jittery mix of hesitant and overeager, clad in a leather jacket and jeans, eyeing her like he half-expects to find a dead body somewhere in their midst.

Admittedly, that’s not a _completely_ far-fetched expectation.

“Fine,” she breathes, but he knows her better than that; he can tell she’s on edge, though to be fair, _on edge_ is her baseline these days.

Just _seeing_ him makes it all worse. All she can hear is the sound of blood pumping madly in her ears, her heartbeat, her breathing, a chorus of internal bodily noises muffling all else. She’s in sweatpants and a loose t-shirt and she knows she must look like a slob – but she’s showered and shaved today, at least, so that’s progress. She hasn’t touched herself, not since last night. She can feel how sticky her thighs are, fucking soaking. It’s ludicrous, really, her body rearing to go at the slightest provocation. It feels dirty. Wrong.

She wonders if the Virgin Mary ever snapped one day and held Joseph down and just fucked the living daylights out of him. She guesses that’d kind of negate the whole _virgin_ epithet.

Her vision is a red haze, a homing missile locked onto its target. She’s strung tight like a wire, on the verge of snapping. She has to resist the urge to jump his bones before he’s so much as taken a look around, and finally, Frank turns to her, brow furrowed in confusion when he ostensibly fails to locate any corpses that need disposing of.

“So, uh… why am I here, again?” he asks, coming to a stop in the middle of the room, noting her conspicuous lack of belongings.

There’s only them. A television. The furniture. The _bed_.

Laurel sucks in a breath. Start off slow. Ease him into this. That’s what she has to do. “I need a favor.”

“What kinda favor?”

“I just-” she exhales, exasperated. “I need an answer before I tell you what it is.”

Frank just stares at her. “You’re askin’ for a blank check.”

It’s more statement than question. Laurel folds her arms, assuming a defensive stance out of habit. “Yes. Now will you do it or not?”

This is unfair. She knows that: taking advantage of his feelings for her, his loyalty. There’s no universe in which he says no to this. To _her._ His gaze is tender, as obedient and single-minded as a dog, and finally Frank nods, unquestioningly.

“Okay. What do you need?”

Fuck. Okay. No going back now. This scenario was a lot easier when she’d played it out in her head. In that hypothetical, she was bolder. She was also less – well, _pregnant_.

Her tone is flat. Business-like. She isn’t propositioning him; that’s not what this is. Not technically.

Well. Maybe just a little.

“I need you to fuck me.”

Frank’s mouth falls open, because whatever it was he was expecting to be asked, it sure as _shit_ wasn’t that. His expression does an impressive pirouette from shock to incredulity to something that vaguely resembles amusement, and then back to flat out shock, all in under ten seconds. She wonders, briefly, if he almost would’ve preferred she ask him to deal with a dead body.

“You… you need me to-”

“I need you to fuck me. Because if I don’t fuck someone soon I’m probably gonna kill someone, and I’m really _really_ trying to minimize my body count. And I just… I need you to not ask any questions, okay?”

“Uh… what?”

She’s half-ready to throttle him. “What part of not asking questions was unclear to you?”

“Wait – Laurel, you can’t just ask me to do that and not think I’m gonna have any questions-”

“Fine. You wanna know why?” she spits, flushed, cheeks burning with a strange, toe-curling combination of arousal and embarrassment. “Because I’m just – I’m just… _horny_ , all the time. Every day. And I’m stressed, about school, and everything – and… I need to get off, and I’d go to a bar and pick somebody up but-” She gestures down in the direction of her protruding stomach, that uninvited guest. “That’s not gonna happen with this _thing_ attached to me, so.”

Frank doesn’t look disgusted, at least; he’s more poleaxed than anything, just standing there, arms hanging uselessly at his sides, taking in the sight of her like he almost believes this is all an elaborate episode of Punk’d in which he’s an unwitting participant. He’s in love with her, she knows that, always has been, probably always will be – but she wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t want her like this, all swollen and bloated and generally unappealing. How the hell _could_ he want her like this.

It’s fucking comical. This whole situation is one big, pathetic, unfunny comedy.

“Look.” She takes a step toward him, raising her chin. “I get it. I’m… disgusting. And if you can’t do it sober, there’s a liquor store down the street, you can-”

“Woah, hey, I don’t need to get wasted to want you. You’re not disgusting,” he interjects, as though personally offended to hear her call herself those things. The words are so forceful they shut her up in seconds, and he moves closer to her, eyes softening to take on that familiar glint of affection. “Don’t say that about yourself.”

“I forgot how you do that.” She gives him a dry, humorless grin. She feels enormous, all at once; awkward and ungainly and frankly unattractive, as lumbering as an elephant. “Forgot… how good a liar you are.”

It’s below the belt. He looks wounded. “Laurel…”

“It’s fine. If you don’t want me,” she chokes out, a knot bobbing in her throat when she tries to swallow. “Just – give it to me straight. I’m gross and… and you can’t get it up for me when I look like this – it’s fine, just tell me, I can take it-”

He advances on her, all at once, until he’s towering over her, pressing himself in close, and she can smell his cologne, and shit, she forgot what that does to her, the Pavlovian response it triggers in her; she’s not the swooning type but she comes damn close, right about then. When he speaks, his voice is deep, rumbling across her skin like an earthquake, turning her legs to gelatin. Every atom inside her is screaming, bouncing off each other, as if trying to escape the confines of her skin.

“Take off your clothes,” is all he says. “Lemme see you.”

God. God, she’s not sure he could’ve asked her to do anything worse; she’d been planning to do this with as much clothing on as physically possible. Lights off. Under the covers. Fuck him through a damn hole in the sheet, Yentl-style. Anything.

Anything but _this_.

But then. Then, something ignites in her. She’s furious, all at once, wants to reach forward and claw his eyes out, beat him black and blue and bloody. How _dare_ he. Demand to see her, to know what he’s getting, like some sort of mare at auction. Her blood turns to magma in her veins, and she grinds her molars hard enough to break them into bits

“What?” she breathes, yanking her shirt over her head with a distinct lack of grace, tearing at the garment until she’s flung it halfway across the room. She steps away, back toward the wall next to the television stand, eyes locked on his, and suddenly Frank looks taken aback, like this wasn’t at all the reaction he was anticipating: fire and brimstone and _fury_. “You want me to put myself on display? Parade around? Y-you want a _preview_?”

Her bra, next. She knows how absurd she looks: six months pregnant and stripping like a maniac, yet she barely has time to process it, or care. Her cheeks are on fire, eyes watering with embarrassment, throat tightening as she disrobes. It’s mortifying, taking off her clothes while he watches, because he can lie to her all he wants, tell her he wants her, but she knows the truth, knows he must be repulsed. That’s a good word for her – repulsive. She hates her body, now, hates everything that’s happening to her; she feels hideous and out of control, and she can’t run, can’t hide from any of it when it’s _inside_ her.

She hates it. She hates herself. Some bloody, fucked-up parody of Virgin Mary – that’s what she is, having a dead man’s baby. The goddamn Christ child; sometimes that’s what she imagines Annalise thinks. She wants to rip her skin off, wants to run and never look back, but she manages to center herself long enough to refocus on Frank, glowering over at him where he stands, watching silently with a look she can’t read.

“Fine,” Laurel bites out, after shucking the clothing on her top half, leaving her sweatpants in place. She’s furious, angry, hot tears beading in her eyes but not falling. She’s shaking, too, with rage and self-loathing and arousal. “Here. Does this get you off? Watching me humiliate myself? Does-”

He’s covering her mouth with his before she can say another word.

Frank kisses just like she remembers, backing her up until she’s pressed against the peeling, olive green wallpaper, and he’s gentle with her but not at all hesitant, not even remotely. There’s nothing in his kiss that would indicate disgust, reluctance; in fact, he infuses the kiss with so much hunger it makes her stiffen initially, before finally Laurel relaxes, his chest brushing her bare, heavy breasts, making her moan.

His beard scratches her lips. She’s so infinitely fucking grateful he grew it back, right then.

“I want you,” he growls, hot and insistent, against her lips. “I want you so bad, Laurel…”

“Don’t-” He cuts her off with a kiss. She can still feel the tears in her eyes starting to seep out, burning with shame, but when he runs his hands up and down her sides before settling them on her hips, she starts to hate her own skin just a little less. “Don’t lie to me-”

If he’s lying. If he’s lying she swears to _God_ she’ll kill him. But then he’s taking her hand, reaching down and placing it at the front of his jeans where his cock is aching, straining against the zipper. Hard. For her.

He smirks, and a pulse of desire runs through her like an electric current. “This feel like a lie?”

He wants her. The thought jolts Laurel violently, like a fever breaking. He _wants_ her, somehow, even like this, even when she spends half her days fretting over her changing body, poking and prodding it as if somehow she can make her stomach recede by doing so. Asher has made more than a few tasteless comments about her pregnancy boobs, but there’s no way she’s _hot_ like this. It simply isn’t within the realm of possibility. Like trying to divide by fucking zero – it just doesn’t compute.

But then Frank is creeping his hands down, settling them onto the sides of her stomach, brushing the taut, stretched skin there, and it’s so twistedly erotic she actually _moans_ ; a full, throaty, embarrassingly needy moan she remembers to bite back too late. She’s excruciatingly sensitive, everywhere, every touch amplified. She’s so _full_ , too, stomach and breasts and all of her, aching for release, touch-starved.

“One condition,” Frank mentions, suddenly, breaking the spell. He’s so close she could count his eyelashes, if she cared to. “We talk, after. Five minutes. No lyin’.”

He raises a hand, toying with her hardened nipple. She whimpers. “Two minutes.”

“Four.”

“ _Two_ ,” she counters again, her temper incited.

Frank doesn’t give in. He lowers his lips to her neck, and then her breast, humming around a mouthful of her. “Three and we got a deal.”

“This is… _coercion_ ,” she protests weakly, though that’s rich coming from her when she all but coerced him into this, into agreeing to fuck her. She knew full well he wouldn’t say no and yet she asked anyway.

She’s a selfish bitch. That’s fine – she can admit that. She’s well aware. She’s shitty and selfish and manipulative but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t get what she came for tonight, and when Frank’s lips curl up into a familiar smug grin, she has to resist the urge to slap it right off his face.

“You want my dick or not?”

He drives a hard bargain.

She wants to snort. _Hard bargain._ It’s an apt descriptor.

At least he’s not trying to pretend this is anything other than what it is. There’s a distinct lack of romance about all this, no bed of roses or wine or chocolate-covered strawberries. No pretense of love. She never thought she’d be so thankful for that.

“Fine – _ah_.”

Her voice breaks off into a moan as his mouth closes in around her nipple. Her breasts are swollen, painfully so – though they look damn good; so far, that’s the only real perk she’s found to this pregnancy business. He groans when he does, cupping her breasts, feeling their weight in his palms. He seems intoxicated, drunk on her body, fascinated by the changes in her. When he kisses her, his kisses are raw with need, and he drinks in her taste with renewed hunger, murmuring an unnervingly genuine litany against her lips, _fuck Laurel I want you so bad, you’re so fuckin’ beautiful, God, you gotta know that-_

He _wants_ her. For the first time in months, she feels desired. Sexy. She banishes the guilt from her mind; she feels awful for wanting this, wanting Frank. Wanting to be _wanted_. She can’t be faulted for that.

She’s only human. Even if some days she doesn’t feel very human at all anymore.

“Bed,” she barks the order at him, though it comes out only half as firm as she’d like it to, muffled against his lips.

Frank complies wordlessly, tugging down her sweatpants, and she steps out of them and follows him over to the bed, naked as the day she was born, still warring with the self-consciousness gathering like a pit in her stomach. She feels awkward, her body cumbersome, stomach unwieldy, not thin and delicate, that feminine cliché, but she takes one look at Frank in the dimly lit room, at his eyes, his pupils, the way they’re pitch-black and blown wide with desire, and she remembers to breathe. She pulls off his jacket and then goes for his t-shirt, running her hands greedily across his stomach, the ridges of his abdomen.

When she looks back up at him, there’s something impossibly tender in his expression. Something that has no place here.

“How we doin’ this?” he asks as they come to a stop at the end of the bed, ever the pragmatist.

She’s thought through the logistics already, of course. “Doggy style.” _I can’t look at you. I can’t take it._

Frank blinks. She never used to be so direct, so brazen about what she wants, but it’s not like she has anything left to lose now, and so finally he nods, casting off his jeans and crawling onto the bed with her. She arranges herself on her hands and knees quickly, trying not to feel as ridiculous as she probably looks, belly and breasts hanging low, all splayed apart and wide open and _on display_.

This isn’t a position they ever fucked in often, it occurs to her, because Frank always wanted to see her, watch her when she came, but missionary is out of the question, and she can’t ride him without thrusting her stomach in his face – which is possibly one of the most _un_ sexy things she can imagine having to experience – and having him spoon her edges too close to territory she’s not willing to cross over into, tonight. The baseness of this position feels fitting, the lack of intimacy to it. It’s impersonal.

It’s just what she needs.

“Hold on a sec,” Frank says, suddenly, clambering off the bed inexplicably and reaching for his discarded jeans.

She growls. “What the hell are you doing?”

Laurel looks up just in time to see Frank retrieve a small foil packet, which he holds up, sheepish. “Relax. Wrap it before you tap it, right?”

She bites out a laugh. Surely he must see the irony in this. “Oh my God, you’ve got to be joking.”

“What?” he teases, taking his place behind her, stopping just as he’s about to rip the condom open.

She rolls her eyes so hard she swears she can feel her optic nerves detach. “Screw the condom – you can’t get me double pregnant, Frank, just _do it_.”

Frank takes that not-so-subtle hint, tossing the packet aside and repositioning himself, drawing her back toward him by the hips, but he doesn’t line himself up straightaway; instead, she can feel him moving lower, until his mouth is pressed against her and he’s working her pussy vigorously from behind. She almost goes cross-eyed from the sensation when he does, from his slippery, deft tongue, the smoothness of his lips, the bristle of his whiskers, and he laps her up like she’s a wellspring and he’s been wandering the desert for decades, like he’s found the fountain of fucking youth. She’s so close already she can feel her cunt clench around nothing, and all at once she’s burning, she’s incendiary, she’s a Molotov cocktail of a woman about to go up in flames, and she needs. She _needs_.

Needs it all. Needs everything.

“Oh – God, do it,” she orders again, voice hoarse, scraping her throat raw. “Fuck, Frank…”

He obliges without a word, moving back up. She can feel him looming over her from behind, mounting her, placing his cock at the cleft of her ass as if assessing something, with no sense of urgency whatsoever. She should’ve figured; sometimes she thinks Frank loves foreplay more than the actual act itself, but she didn’t come here to be teased, to _beg_. She _won’t_ beg.

Maybe in another life she would’ve, but she takes, now; takes and doesn’t ask permission, and sure as fuck does not _beg_.

Still. Still, he won’t move, and Laurel almost roars in impatience, swiveling her hips, feeling him place his tip at her entrance but stall there. She’s red in the face when she finally musters her voice, panting hysterically. “Are you gonna do this or not? I don’t have… all day.”

“Relax,” he soothes. He moves forward, draping himself over her from behind until he’s able to tuck a strand of damp, sweaty hair behind her ear, press his lips to that delicate shell of cartilage. His voice is a purr, soft and sensual. “You’re tense. I’m not gonna do anything until you relax.”

“I’m not here to fucking _meditate_ , Frank-”

“Relax,” he coos again, working his hands over her back, shaping her beneath his palms like potter’s clay, until she can feel the tension in her sinews unwinding, her body falling open for him. He lays a trail of kisses along the sinuous line of her spine, humming against her flesh. “You need to relax. Just breathe.”

 _Breathe._ Sometimes she forgets to do that, these days; if it wasn’t an involuntary human reflex, she thinks she would’ve dropped dead weeks ago. But there’s something about the press of his body and the hypnotic, measured cadence of his voice that centers her, makes her focus only on that smooth _inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale_ , until she feels herself give in, some internal valve inside her releasing and all the pressure packed into her limbs spilling out.

She’s not going to admit he’s right, ever, about anything. But maybe she _did_ need that.

And then suddenly it registers that he’s moving in closer, angling her ass upward and entering her in one agonizingly slow stroke, so slow she can feel every single rock-hard inch of his cock, feel how her body stretches, opens for him. She nearly collapses forward when he does, a feverish moan bursting past her lips, and suddenly she doesn’t give much of a shit about _relaxation_ at all.

“Oh God, oh _God_ – yes-”

She reaches clumsily down to her underside, past her swollen stomach, until her fingers find purchase on her clit, and she rubs in desperate, stuttering circles as Frank draws himself out before sinking his cock into her again, uncharacteristically silent, abstaining from dirty talk for once in his life. Frank must notice her hand working between her legs, because he makes a sound of disapproval right then, reaching down and drawing it away.

He laces their fingers together, pinning her hand back down to the sheets, murmuring to her. “Hey. Don’t force it. Just relax.”

God. _God_ , when the fuck did he become some fucking Zen tantric sex guru? Was this a development she’d somehow missed?

“Harder,” she grits out, thrusting her ass back against his strokes, in some futile attempt to accomplish – to be honest, she doesn’t even know _what_ , just _something_. “ _Harder_.”

“No,” he says, and his refusal takes her aback. “We’re goin’ slow. I got you, okay? Let’s go slow.”

Slow. _Slow_ – this must be a goddamn joke. Now he’s a comedian. She doesn’t have time for this; she came here to get fucked hard and fast, to get off and get it over with quickly, but Frank seems hell bent on resisting, and she supposes there’s no real way for her to fight him. He has control over the pace, the depth, all of it. For once, she can’t force him to bend to her will, even though her blood is boiling and her brain is concocting every possible method of getting him to do exactly that.

She doesn’t think he’s afraid of hurting the baby. Probably he knows he can’t. But he’s tentative in a way he’s never been with her, before, an exquisite gentleness in every brush of his fingertips, and she doesn’t need _or_ want that. She wants to use him.

She wishes he would just give it up and be content with using _her_.

And for the dozenth time tonight, guilt settles into her veins like nauseatingly sweet, sticky caramel. She feels filthy. She feels manipulative. She feels like an awful human being; a slut, fucking a man who isn’t the father of her child while the man who _is_ is probably rolling over in his grave right about now. _God_ , she is a slut. Spreading her legs was what got her into this whole goddamn mess to begin with – and look where she is now. Right back at it.

_I’m a cheater, yes. And a slut, and a bad person, and now a murderer. Judge me if you want, just do it while we’re carrying the damn body._

She wants to laugh.

Bonnie told her, once, that there are worse things than murder. Laurel wonders if this is one of them.

It’s excruciating. It’s unbearable, his leisurely pace, how unhurriedly and deliberately he moves. The slow slide of slick on slick. The lack of friction. The pulsing in her clit. _God_. She can feel herself building but it’s not happening near as fast as she needs it to – and she’s done waiting, done _relaxing_. Done with _slow_ and _steady_ and all that bullshit. She can feel everything like she’s never felt it before, her muscles seizing up, touch receptors overloaded.

She hardly recognizes her voice; it’s hard, as cutting as a razor’s edge. “Make me come. N… _now_.”

“Laurel-”

“ _Now_ ,” she spits. She bunches the sheets in her fists, heaving something like a sob as the hum in her bones takes over, drowns out her thoughts. She won’t beg. She’ll die before she begs. “If… if you don’t do it now, I swear to God, I swear to fucking _God_ -”

His fingers on her clit, then, rubbing hard and fast and frantic, with just the right amount of pressure. She falls silent. He’s always been good at that, at giving her what she wants. _Needs_. He knows better than to disobey her now, and his hand ghosts across her distended stomach, brushing it inadvertently as he adjusts himself, the obscene sound of skin slapping skin deadening her senses, and shit, this all feels so wrong and sick and deliciously perverse, and _just right_.

She forgets everything when she comes, convulsing under him. It’s like that fleeting half-second just after waking, right before she remembers, remembers Wes and her father and Dominic and the Great Red Spot on Jupiter-sized shitstorm that is her life. That moment right between slumber and consciousness where everything is perfect, before reality comes crashing in. That’s what this is – forgetting. That’s why she’s here.

That second. That _split second_. It makes all this worth it.

It makes her feel alive in a way she’d forgotten was possible.

She feels him spill inside her not long after with a choked groan, though in the midst of all the mind-blistering pleasure it doesn’t fully register until she’s falling down onto the bed, rolling over and tugging the sheets up to cover herself and pressing her thighs together, feeling that telltale stickiness of his come there, dribbling out of her. She wouldn’t normally give a shit about her nakedness, would luxuriate in it, put it on display, but now she covers herself reflexively, unable to look at her own body, repelled by the sight of it.

Frank isn’t. Isn’t repelled by her, by the sight of her. Any of it. He’s undaunted, seeing her for only _her_ , and when he falls down at her side, chest heaving and glistening with sweat, he’s attentive to her at once, moving in close, because apparently he’s intent on making this as hard as he possibly can for her.

“Hey,” he manages, through his gasping breaths, reaching over and stroking her arm. “You good?”

“Yeah. Fine.” She pauses, then adds, “Great.”

That’s when it hits her: their deal. Three minutes of obligatory pillow talk. Full disclosure, no lying. Frank held up his end of the bargain and now he’s looking to her, blue eyes expectant, as if urging her to initiate before he has to.

Christ. She should’ve gone all praying mantis, screwed him then snapped his neck and been through with it. Would’ve been easier than doing this, at least.

Would’ve been a hell of a lot more merciful.

“I should go,” she dismisses herself, all at once, before letting even half a beat pass between them.

She catapults her pregnant ass out of bed as fast as she can, gathering up her clothes, pulling them on, and it takes Frank’s hazy brain a minute to process what she means as he watches dumbly, mouth agape, a look of very elaborate hurt playing out across his features. She tries to pretend it’s ridiculous, unfounded, wants to make fun of him, joke about _who’s the hormonal emotional wreck now_ , but she hates hurting him. She might as well be driving a knife through her chest, twisting and turning and mutilating her insides with each second she remains here.

“Hey, what about our deal?”

“I’m breaking it,” she admits freely, as she tugs on her shoes. There’s no point sugarcoating this. There’s no way _to_ sugarcoat this. “Tonight was… I needed tonight. I needed it _a lot_. And-” Her voice breaks. “Thanks, for this. But I’m really not… not emotionally equipped to have this conversation right now.”

He sits up. “You didn’t even let me get a word in-”

“Look. I know… you think you wanna be with me,” she tells him, stopping by the door, her purse in one hand, coat in the other. She sighs. “You don’t say it. But I can see it. And just… trust me, Frank-” She smiles a crooked, terrible sort of smile. “I’m a ticking time bomb, and you’re not… you’re not gonna wanna be around when I go off, okay?”

She’ll ruin him. Ruin him like she ruined the others. Ruin him like she ruined Wes. Probably she’s already ruined him – but she can, at least, spare him any further damage, keep him from getting caught in the crossfire when her life inevitably falls to pieces, one way or another.

He’s better off without her. Everyone is.

She opens the door, just as he swings his legs over the side of the bed. “Don’t… hey, Laurel, don’t-”

Laurel tosses the room key down on the sheets, biting her tongue. It lands with a light plop, and Frank picks it up, frowning.

“I have the room for the night,” she explains, cold, distant. She swallows, avoiding his eyes. “You can stay if you want, I guess.”

She leaves him with that. She doesn’t look back as she closes the door behind her.

Laurel tells herself it’s because she won’t be that much of a miserable fucking cliché. The honest truth is that she’s afraid of what she might see if she does.


End file.
